I used to believe all of that, until I realised it’s just not true. The more you live in hiding, afraid to stammer openly, the less you speak and your mind catastrophises everything. This thing is, everything you said is just ridiculously untrue (I know, I used to think exactly the same thing). Have you reached out to your local stuttering groups? Have you met the hundreds of successful, confident, happy stutterers out there? It’s only when I saw people like me (stutterers) succeeding that I began to realise that that could be me. I discovered the concept of embracing the stutter, taking pride in being a PWS (the same way someone with autism or dyslexia or palsy can talk about taking pride in being a person with a disability). I now stutter openly at work, I disclose it frequently so everyone knows it’s just my normal way of speaking, and I say whatever the fuck I wanna say. And it feels so liberating. I used to be a covert stutterer, feeling like a constant fraud, pretending to be fluent. But now I feel so much more authentic and happy. I’ve so many friends, both in the stuttering community as well as the fluent one. Life’s pretty good with a stutter once you dare get out of your shell.